


Season 8 Drabbles

by Lyndsaybones



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-28
Updated: 2017-03-27
Packaged: 2018-10-11 23:39:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 14,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10477164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyndsaybones/pseuds/Lyndsaybones
Summary: A series of scenes in between from season 8. Sorry! They're mostly sad af.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warning for suicide attempt

I can’t sleep. If I sleep, I stay too long in that middle ground where you’re still alive. And then I wake up and you’re really gone and it hurts as much as it did when we found you. Over and over and over. I can’t keep doing it.

There’s nothing holding me down. I thought that the baby would keep me grounded. But now I think maybe it’s not real, or not really mine. I haven’t felt it move yet. I should have by now. Maybe it’s dead like you.

“There has to be an end…”

I know. I know. I know.

They gave me these pills, after. I was supposed to take them to help me sleep.

They told me to limit my caffeine intake when I admitted that I drink coffee almost constantly now. They said that was why I couldn’t sleep. Very rational. I don’t even really like it, the coffee, but it makes me feel normal. A warm cup in my hands distracts my overthinking mind, anchors me. If I’m busy fixing another cup, making another pot, I can almost stop thinking about your cold, gray skin. It busies my restless hands that would otherwise rest on my burgeoning belly, another reminder that we’re here and you’re gone. I know I’m not supposed to. I know this intellectually, I do.

But I’ve been nothing but reckless since the day you left. How else would you know how hard I fought to find you unless I wrote the words with the scars on my body? How would you know how much I hurt unless you could see it in my sunken, tired eyes? All the stupid, useless things you believe in and you still couldn’t believe how much I need you. You never would have left if you did.

I haven’t slept since the funeral. I don’t think I have. I know I lay down, forcing the air in and out. I don’t think anything happens after that. I don’t think I’m even really here. At least you’re somewhere, finally. You’re in the ground, cold and quiet. How long now, 3 days? A week?

The guys keep showing up with food. Frohike stares at me until I eat it. It tastes like nothing. Langly tries to tell me that you wouldn’t want me to do this to myself. I can barely even hear him, like I’ve got cotton in my ears. Byers just sits there watching me.

You’re dead and really, so am I. Except you get the luxury of silence. Your voice is thrumming in my ears, still. I can hear you murmuring my name, telling me that you love me as you kiss the pulse point under my jaw. It doesn’t stop and it unwinds whatever little bit of stability I had left. Maybe if I just sleep, really sleep.

So I’m sitting here, a bottle full of pills in my hand and thinking that if we’re dead, all of us together, that we can just pick up where we left off.

I’m on your couch, I’m wearing your t- shirt. I can’t smell you here, anymore, not even in the dirty laundry I never washed.

I’ve run out of feelings. Is that possible? Is this what it means to be bereft? I’m just here.

I’m here, I’m here, I’m here. Why aren’t you?

I open the bottle and stare at the little white pills that could take me away from all of this.

I dump them on the coffee table and wonder how many I can swallow at once. 4 or 5 maybe. 4 rounds of 5 and that’s the bottle. Maybe I should run a bath too. Take all the pills and just sink under. I’ll look like Ophelia. They’ll bury me under pink peonies and white lilies. Next to you, I hope.

I line them up, 4 groups of 5 pills. I make a pot of coffee. I go run a warm bath. I strip down to nothing and swipe the pills back into the bottle. I pour the coffee into the mug you’d always designated as mine. I pad into bathroom, mug in one hand, pill bottle in the other.

“Sculleeeee, I love you….” I hear you sigh, even though you never said it out loud.

Shut up. No you don’t. You’d be here if you did.

“I never saw you as a mother before….”

Stop it, stop it, stop it. I squeeze my eyes shut and will you away.

I slide into the water and rest my head on the edge of the tub. It’s warm and it’s the first time since we put you in the ground that I feel something beyond numbness. I think about your hands on the small of my back, your lips on the hollow of my neck. I sigh softly and wrinkle my brow. Maybe if it hadn’t been so good, this wouldn’t feel like it does. Even the good things feel wrong.

I open my eyes and stare at the pill bottle. I know, chemically, what this will do to us. I know that my breathing will become depressed and I’ll stop oxygenating. When I lose consciousness, I’ll slip under and the water will flood my airway. My heart will stop and it’ll be over. So much easier than being born. There’s no fight in it, just flight.

Someone will find me, maybe John or Skinner and they will haul my cold, bare body out of the water. They’ll break my ribs doing CPR and press their mouth against my blue lips, a last kiss. Pink froth will bubble out of my mouth and nose as they press and press and press. And they’ll give up,realizing that I’ve made my choice and my peace. That I’ve gone to find you, really find you at last. Maybe they’ll leave me there on the cold tile for the coroner to collect, or maybe they’ll put me in your bed.  
But then I feel a tremble low in my belly. I suck in a sharp gasp, shocked out of the vision of my own death.

“There’s so much more you need to do with your life, Scully. There’s so much more than this…”

I sob helplessly as I get out of the water. I dry myself off and put your shirt back on. I pour the mug out into the bath water and drain the tub. I open the bottle and swallow one pill dry, just one, letting it burn a slow track to my stomach. I was supposed to take them to help me sleep. So I did. And I sleep.


	2. Deep Sea Diving

She knows that it is the grief dictating her in all ways right now. The heaviness in her limbs, the listless drifting from room to room, she can’t settle herself, even though she’s so tired she can barely breathe.

She hasn’t been able to breathe for months, really. From the moment he drifted into the stars to the moment he’d crashed back to earth, six feet into the ground, she’d been holding her breath. And now that it’s over, her lungs are out of practice. The mere act of letting the air in and out without deep concentration is lost on her.

It’s been days and she still has cemetary dirt under her nails, tear stains on her cheeks, a weariness that pushes her from every angle, like being in the deep sea.

She didn’t let anyone else touch him. She shaved him, trimmed the fingernails that sat in blackened nail beds, combed his hair. She took care of him instead of taking care of herself.

Her ribs are showing, the fine bones of her wrists protruding. She knows she needs to do better than this, but all she can really do is focus on pushing the air in out of her chest. It has to be enough for now. Because she doesn’t have anything else.

She wakes, and the sunlight casts pillars of warmth across her bed. The trembling, quaking feeling low in her belly teases out a hint of a smile as she works her way to consciousness. The smile, which had barely begun, drifts away as she remembers that he’s still gone and she’s still there. The dry air tumbles into her lungs unbidden and falls back out again.

She goes into work early and leaves late. She doesn’t want the pity or the concern. She wants to be left alone. She wants to disappear into the basement, where she can still feel some part of him, still catch a whiff of his soap and aftershave.

John, Skinner, the Gunmen, her mother, they all flit about, quietly reminding her to eat, to rest, to think of the baby.

Maggie asked if she’d thought about the nursery and had to stifle an incredulous laugh.

I don’t get happy endings.

“I was thinking maybe stars,” she answers instead.

Maggie seems pleased.


	3. Safe

Her hips and back protest as she makes her way from the car to his grave. The headstone, the one he’d bought, had just been set in the ground. The dirt had settled enough. She realizes as she stares down at the gray rock, that he’d always planned on leaving her one way or another.

He perhaps would have postponed his trip into star dust had he known about the baby. But the end would have still been the same. She’d still be standing at his grave.

She feels her chest tighten as she grinds her molars together. Heat spreads up her neck and across her cheeks. He’d held her against his chest and told her that he wouldn’t risk losing her when he knew all along that she would still end up lost. She flings the flowers down as angry tears cut tracks down her face.

“You selfish fuck!” she growls as she stalks away, resigning herself to never return. Resigning herself to let him go.

She goes home and starts piecing together the crib her mother bought. She stuffs his dress shirt into the hamper, absolving herself of him, trying to close the yawning hole he has left.

 

The thick manilla envelope arrives at her basement office while John is off gathering up some lunch. She can feel her heart thumping and the baby responds in kind to the sudden rush.

It’s from a law office in Chilmark. She slices her thumb on the tab as she opens it, a preamble of the pain to come. Words like “sole beneficiary” jump out and her chest starts to ache. A smaller slip of paper slips out, a handwritten note.

It’s from him, scrawled out in his familiar looping hand. It says he’s sorry. It says he loves her. It says don’t give up.

She sobs as the note lilts to the desk. She digs her palms against her eyes and gasps for air through the tears. It takes her a long time to settle herself again, but she does.

She gathers up the legal papers, the note and leaves quietly. She goes home and crawls into bed.

 

She wanders from room to room in his apartment. It smells like dust and dry air. Only a few weeks left on the lease. She’s been dreading this. Cleaning out his things, moving the fish tank, parsing his belongings out to the Gunmen and the Goodwill, she’ll have to just buckle down and do it already.

But not today.

Today, she’s just going to give everything a good cleaning and start coming up with a game plan for the weeks ahead.

She starts in the kitchen. He never kept much food around, so she’s able quick work of the cabinets and fridge.

The living room and bathroom are more slow going. She’s mentally noting what should go to who as she dusts, sweeps and organizes. The computer and printer go to Langly, video collection to Frohike, ties to Byers. She stares at the leather couch and briefly considers trading out her soft Ethan Allen sofa. She almost forgets to breathe when she finds a Shiner Bock cap behind the TV stand.

By the time she makes it to the bedroom, the sun is setting and weariness is settling over her like a warm blanket.

She idly remembers playing tag as a kid at one Naval base or another. The rules seemed to change from place to place. She couldn’t recall if it was Japan or Hawaii, but the kids at one base played a version with a home. “Home” could be a flagpole or a mailbox, maybe someone’s front porch, but the second a player touched it, they couldn’t be tagged. The kids would squeal and shout “safe!” as they reached home. She remembers thinking that it was terribly unfair at the time. What’s the point if you aren’t going to really play?

As she eases herself onto his bed she wants to shout “safe!” She wants to stop playing, catch her breath, to let whoever is running this cosmic game know that she’s had quite enough.


	4. Oh

When she hangs up the phone, she has to think hard about what to do next. The baby forces a limb against her diaphragm and she is reminded to take a breath.

She grieved him, she hated him and at last she forgives him and now…what? There’s no stage of grief where they come back from the grave.

The sight of him is almost too much. Touching him is impossible to avoid. Her skin wants his. She wants desperately to feel him tuck her hair behind her ear and smooth his thumb over her cheek. She wants his chin resting on top of her head as his fingers trace lazy circles at the base of her spine. She wants to feel safe and warm and loved.   
__

This moment doesn’t feel real. It’s impossible on so many levels. She shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be here. The news she has to tell him shouldn’t even exist.

And yet here they are.

She’d dreamed, in the early weeks, of his face cracking into a broad smile upon hearing the news. She imagined he would wrap himself around her and that she would thank   
God for his safe return, for the miracle they’d been granted. She would show the Lord her gratitude every day.

So here they are, his hand in hers. She’s already explained how long he’s been gone and what’s happened to him. There’s just one thing left to tell him. She prays to the God that she is certain has forgotten her.

“Mulder, I’m pregnant.”

She holds her breath, wanting time to stop right there. She wants to preserve this moment in amber and wear it around her neck instead of the cross that betrays her. What comes next is bound to hurt like hell, even more than God’s utter failure.

“Oh.”

Like a breath. Like a secret wound opening up. He pulls his hand away.

Oh.

Her chest burns and tears prickle at her eyes. He needs her strong right now and her reserves are so damn low. She’s been so long under the crushing weight of grief and fear that she hardly knows how to feel anything else.

“Oh” feels like thousand nails scouring her, opening every wound she’s been desperately trying to scar over.

“Oh” is a death of its own, the death of them. They’re back to square one. She can see him sizing her up and gauging her intentions just as he did eight years before. Only now, she doesn’t have the energy to win his trust all over again.

She stands, slowly, cautiously, because everything, positively everything hurts.

“I know this is too much,” she rasps. “It’s too much for me, too.”  
______

He watches her rise and takes in the sight of her. She’s not just pregnant, she’s very pregnant. He’d dreamed, a long time ago, of seeing her like this. He imagined her full and round and for once, that he could be truly satisfied with his life. He dreamed that he could come out of the darkness at last.

She looks so beautiful and so incredibly sad. He wants to tell her both of these things, but his jaw bobs helplessly and he can’t offer anything to halt her hasty retreat.

He knows he’s hurting her right now, but he’s hurting too and he doesn’t know how to be happy for her.

It’s supposed to be his baby growing in her belly. It’s supposed to be their new beginning.

She leaves.

He lets her.   
______

John is in the hallway. Ever faithful, that one. Worry is etched in lines of his face.

“You okay, Agent Scully?”

She takes a moment to respond and looks up with a thin smile.

“I’m fine. I’m gonna go home.”

She knows she’s not fooling him. He’s not the one she needs to fool right now.

“I’m glad to hear you say that. You need to take care of yourself.”

She makes it all the way home before her defenses completely crumble. The gasping, choking sobs rocket from deep in her chest and she is powerless to stop them. The   
baby seems to sense the upheaval, kicking and rolling within the cradle of her pelvic bones.

She wishes, ever so briefly, that they’d just left him in the ground. She hates herself for even thinking it, but there’s a part of her that can’t bear facing him again. She can’t even explain this baby to herself, let alone to him. All she’s been certain of is how much she’s needed him and that even with him alive and breathing, she’s still alone.


	5. Alluvium

“Where’s Scully?” Skinner asks tentatively.

He is propped up in bed, his limbs feeling numb and heavy.

“She left,” he says, feeling her absence like a yawning hole in his chest.

Skinner nods and sits down next to the bed.

“She told you, then?” he asks.

Mulder quirks a weak smile. “The part where I’ve been dead, or the part where she got herself pregnant while I was gone?”

Skinner looks confused. “Mulder you don’t-”

He cuts him off. “It’s okay, it’s just…a lot, ya know?”

Skinner looks like he’s about to speak but thinks better of it and knits his fingers together.

“I know,” he says, finally. “It’s unimaginable.”

“Why were you looking for Scully?” he asks, a false lightness in his voice.

“I was going to attempt getting her to go home and rest for a while. The only time she’s slept has been in this chair.”

“I’ve never gotten anywhere telling her to slow down. I don’t imagine you have either,” he prods.

Skinner can see he’s looking for more, trying to piece the world back together in his mind.

“It’s been a lot for her. All of this.”

“She seems like she’s moved on,” he spits, coming out more bitterly than it sounded in his own head.

“Do you remember how you were when she was missing? When she ended up in a bed like this?”

He remembers the utter desperation and recklessness of those dark days and cannot imagine his staunch, practical Scully behaving quite so irresponsibly or so drowned in her own self pity. He was half a man without her back then.

“That bad, huh?”

Skinner meets his eyes and behind his glasses, his eyes are stricken.

“Mulder, I can’t…it’s been so much worse than that. I thought she’d die right along with you.”

He maintains his outward stoicism, but feels Skinner’s words like lead weights pulling him under.

“Whatever you’re feeling about her, about the situation…just be careful with her.”

He feels a slow burn in his chest and fights to keep the anger out of his voice.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel about any of this,” he mutters from behind clenched teeth.

He’s not sure he wants to hear any more. But the words are tumbling out of his mouth before he really has a chance to think about what he’s saying.

“Scully’s baby…is it…I mean, did she…” he’s not even sure what it is that he’s really asking.

“Mulder, some things aren’t for me to tell.”

He nods and closes his eyes. “Yeah… okay.”  
______

It’s been hours. She’s been laying in bed all night and most of the morning. She had lain down shortly after leaving Mulder at the hospital and hadn’t been able to get up since. The sun has been up for a while, but she’s not certain for how long. She’d watched the sunlight rise in columns on the wall and stared, nearly unblinking as they made their ascent. Dust particles dance and weave through air, disappearing as if swept away by an atom bomb whenever the heat kicks on. In the stillness and silence, she imagines she can feel his breath on her neck, smell his aftershave, remember that she was loved.

The baby stretches and rolls, pressing against her overtaxed bladder. The phone rings three times before she comes back to herself and makes a conscious decision as to whether she will answer it.

“Scully,” she answers, her voice thick with sleep even though she’s been up for hours.

“Is it true?” Frohike asks.

She’s smiling in spite of herself. “It’s true.”

A long pause, “I’ll be damned.”

“Yeah, it’s uh…it’s amazing,” she adds, now fighting tears.

“You okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t sound fine.”

“I’m okay, I am. It’s just been a long few days.” Her attempts at reassurance usually fall flat with him.

“The Sprout’s okay?”

“Baby’s fine too.”

“I’ll bet Mulder was over the moon.”

Her breath hitches and she chokes back a sharp sob.

“Scully?”

“He’s a little overwhelmed with everything, I think.” She’s helpless to keep the tears out of her voice.

“I’ve got a pork shoulder going in the smoker soon, I’ll bring you some tonight.”

Between Frohike mothering her and her actual mother, she never wants for a full refrigerator.

“I’m okay, really. You don’t have to.”

“I’ll drop it off around 6.”

Resistance is futile.

“Okay.”  
_______

Skinner bought new shoes before the funeral. They now have two layers of cemetery dirt; one from burying him and one from bringing him back. As he strides through the hospital hallway, they pinch at his big toes and squeak on the linoleum floors.

Scully hasn’t been back since she left 48 hours before. Mulder hasn’t asked for her.

“Quit pacing out there, Skinner!” Mulder calls.

He ducks his head in and casts a furtive smile in Mulder’s direction.

“How’d you know it was me?”

“Your shoes,” Mulder replies with a chuckle.

Skinner looks down and sees the faint dusting of dirt, the bits of mud caked around the eyelets. He remembers staring at his toes next to Mulder’s snowy grave and listening to Scully’s grief pouring out like a gushing wound.

When he closes his eyes, he sees a photo negative of her tear-streaked face. He naively thought that by bringing him back, he could make things right again. He hoped that he could pull her out of the darkness. He realizes just how wrong he has been.

“They’re gonna cut me loose tomorrow,” he says with a muted smile.

“That’s great.”

“Where do I go, though?” he asks tentatively.

“Home, Mulder. You go home.”

He looks deeply confused, his eyebrows knitted tightly.

“I’ve been dead for three months…how do I still have a home?”

He looks at his shoes again. “She wouldn’t let anyone touch it, just like she wouldn’t let anyone touch you.”

“Scully? How on earth could she afford that?”

“You made her your sole beneficiary, Mulder.”

Skinner can see the wheels turning in Mulder’s head.

“She wasn’t ready yet,” Skinner adds.

Mulder is breathing faster, looking for all the world as if he’d like to run screaming from the room. He sees him suck in a deep breath and squeeze his eyes shut.

“Well, I guess I should thank her for not having any coping skills,” he says behind gritted teeth.

Skinner wonders if the cruelty he hears is intentional or if it’s Mulder who has no coping skills at this point. Maybe both.

“She’s not the person she was, Mulder. But she needs you to be the person you were.” He watches the words land on Mulder like grenades. “If you can’t do that, you need to walk away.”

Mulder’s eyes narrow and his jaw sets to one side.

“Well, Walter, you’ve been waiting in the wings all this time, this may be your big shot.”


	6. Tabula Rasa

He can see the tears brimming in her eyes and feels his chest tighten. His attempts at an explanation come off more sharply than he’d intended. He can see that’s he’s said the wrong thing, but he has no idea what the right thing is.

“I don’t know what you want me to do here, Scully.”

She turns away from him. He watches her shoulder blades draw together and she presses her palms into her lower back as she tips her chin at the ceiling.

“I want you to do whatever you want, Mulder,” she sighs. Her voice is thick with tears and it breaks his heart. “You disappeared and you died and then you came back. You get to do whatever you want.”

She’s reaching for the doorknob and he can’t stop himself from crossing the room. He reaches for her, but stops short, his fingertips so close that he can feel the warmth radiating off of her back. He fears that if he touches her, he’ll wrap his arms around her and squeeze the life right out of her. She lets go of the doorknob and palms her face with her hands.

“What about you, Scully? What do you want?”

She draws in a long, rattling breath. “I got what I prayed for…I just should have been more specific.”

And just like that, she grabs the doorknob and swiftly disappears into his fateful hallway. The door closes with a dull whump. He’s left standing with his hand still in the air, his fingers buzzing in anticipation of touching her.

He backs away from the door, dropping his hands lamely to his sides. The fish tank bubbles happily in the corner and its occupants drift about, blissfully unaware. He wishes he could be that innocent.

He picks up his bag, the spongy leather handles still warm from her hand, and wanders into the bedroom. The bed has been made, which is something he’s not bothered to do once in his adult life. He imagines Scully with her short limbs and round belly straining to tuck the edges of a fitted sheet and chuckles softly in spite of himself.

He drops the bag on the floor and flops face first into the pillows. He can smell her. He catches it faintly at first, but sucks in a deep whiff and is hit full force. Some smells are inherently comforting to him: summer rain on the concrete, tomato plants sunk into inky black top soil and Scully, a clean, warm smell that he’d never really been able to put his finger on.

He’d said once, as she lay across his chest, that if the color pink had a smell, it’d smell like her. She laughed.

And now, with his face buried in the pillow, he sees pink behind his eyelids and his olfactory receptors are ignited like a string of firecrackers.  
“Jesus, Scully,” he sighs as he rolls to his back. Realizing that she’s been sleeping in his bed so recently makes his heart pound, out of fear or arousal, he’s not entirely certain.

He sits up, propping himself on his elbows and wonders if he can catch her. Surely she’s not moving that fast these days. He gets up and peers out the window. There she is, moving to the curb as she raises her arm to hail a cab. Her other hand is digging fiercely at her lower back in tight circles. He goes to open the window just as a cab noses up to the curb and he stops himself. She looks up and sees him watching her and anxiety crawls up the back of his neck as he stumbles away from the window.

He wonders if she could see the terror in his eyes from four floors up.

He flops backwards onto the bed and imagines a pink clouds puffing up in his wake as he remembers that first night.

He’d had every intention of sleeping on the couch. It was the gentlemanly thing to do. But she woke up as he tried to settle her into his bed. Those sharp blue eyes peered up so earnestly that he could scarcely catch his breath. She pressed her hand against his chest, wordlessly asking him to stay. And so he did.

Her mouth tasted like chamomile tea and her lips were warm and buttery. His heart was pounding and he wondered if she was as nervous as he. As he pulled away to look at her, he saw her eyes drop and her lashes flutter gently. There was a vulnerability, a shyness that he’d never seen before.

He cupped her face in his hands and laid soft kisses on her forehead, eyelids and cheeks.

“God, you’re so beautiful,” he whispered as he went.

He peeled her clothes away like unwrapping the breakables on moving day.

When he slid into her for the first time, it felt like coming home and he was overwhelmed with gratitude that she’d been the one to take him there.

“Jesus, you feel amazing,” he sighed into the crook of her neck.

She’d moaned softly as he stroked into her and was terrified that he would break her if he went too hard or fast. He even struggled to let his hands roam her bare skin for fear his rough palms would tear at the vanilla silk of her skin.

But she’d urged him on, running her hot little hands up and down his back, tilting her hips to bring him in deeper. He wanted it to last forever and just as he feared it would end too soon, she went as taught, arching her back and clenching around him like a vise.

“Oh, oh, oh, oooooooohhh.” It came out in a voice he’d never heard from her.

That was all it took. He was gone, tumbling over the edge with her.

After, she lay soft and boneless against his chest. “I love you,” she said.

Tears trickled down to his temples. He didn’t say it back.  
_______

Her brother had mentioned more than once that he was worried about her mental health.

“Trauma leaves more than a mark, Dana,” he’d said.

Bill doesn’t know the half of it, no one does. Not even Mulder.

The panic attacks started shortly after Duane Barry had gotten his hands on her. After the abduction, Donnie Pfaster, Gerry Schnauz, the cancer, the bee sting, Ritter’s lucky bullet and a dozen more near misses, they’ve become part of her “normal.” The only recent change being that she’s not taking her anxiety meds. Any semblance of control she had over the attacks is gone.

So here she is, in the back of a cab with her heart pounding furiously, her head buzzing like a hornet’s nest.

“Ma’am? Are you alright?” the cabbie asks.

She squeezes her eyes so tightly that she sees tiny explosions of white light.

“I’m fine.”

“I can take you to the hospital,” he offers.

“No, I’m okay. I just need to get home, please,” she says, trying to repress the urge to take in a gulping mouth full of air.

If it goes on like this, there will be Braxton Hicks contractions, probably a migraine to boot. She focuses on mentally reciting all the bones in the human body. The baby is fluttering and kicking and she is reminded that she isn’t the only one in distress.

She makes it home and once she gets the door shut, she comes unwound. She ends up in the bathroom vomiting up breakfast. The tiny hex tiles on the bathroom floor dig into her knees, making her knee caps look like honey combs. She is a shaking, sobbing mess and hates herself for it. She grinds her molars together and wills herself to stop crying.

An angry groan rumbles up from her chest as she struggles to get back to her feet. All the tears, all the time wasted.

“Stupid, so stupid,” she berates herself.

This is what you get. There was a reason you didn’t want to let him in in the first place. Now it’s time to pay the piper.

She wobbles and sways as she makes her way from the sink to the bedroom. Her sweater is heavy with perspiration and a touch of vomit. She pulls it over her head and shucks off her maternity pants. The urge to weep twists in her throat and she shoves it down with a ragged breath. She shakes her hands at her sides like she’s trying to air dry them and heads for the shower.

Suck it up, Dana. No more tears, not for him.

She steps under the spray, just slightly hotter than she can tolerate. A contraction tightens her belly and squeezes at her back. She grits through it silently as she lets the water rain down over her.   
______

She’s all business the next time he sees her, although he notes her quiet grimace as she eases onto the couch.

He can feel his hackles raise and nearly vibrate at the mention of a partner.

Partner? Or baby daddy?

Not so subtly, he reminds her that she’s left him and their division behind. He wants to hate her for it. He really does. But sitting there with her mouth drawn in a tight line, he gets the feeling that she hates herself and him enough for everyone in the room, including the nameless someone shifting under her sweater.

“You can talk as tough as you like, but you and I both know that you’re going to have bigger things to worry about in a few months.”

She casts a sidelong glance his way purses her lips in a way that he finds all too inviting.

He grumbles under his breath when Skinner’s hand falls to the small of her back as they leave.

At the Hoover building, same story. Only this time she’s got her armor on. It didn’t even occur to him that one could purchase a black, button down maternity suit, but there she is looking like an overripe plum with legs.

He has no idea how to approach her. He knows how he’d like to approach this “partner” of hers.

Guns blazing, raining fire.

He’d get a lot more than the lift of her imperious brow for that. At least an angry Scully would be one that he recognized. This woman who greeted him when he woke is battered and vulnerable. He feels like he doesn’t know her anymore.

He’s had a little time to read through the cases this Doggett fella has worked. It didn’t take him long to realize that Scully had been through the wringer. She’d had more hospitalizations in the last 6 months than she had in the previous 6 years. Over and over again, Agent Doggett’s name peppered the accounts.

“Oh so easily replaced,” he sighs.  
__________

She can feel the animosity rolling off of him. He’s angry with her for moving on, for living. If only he understood that she’s barely clinging to life. The part of her that is growing and nourishing the baby, the part of her that worries over him as he proves just how angry he is, those appear alive. But the part of her that was adored, worshipped by him, she doesn’t feel blood going to it anymore. 

After the debacle with John, he rides back to her apartment with her. She is stoic, feeling like they’re falling back into old routines. She wonders briefly if he has forgotten what they’d become before he left.

She just wants to get home and get away from him. What’s happening, this distance, hurts more than she knew possible. His thunderous silence and aspersions make her chest ache.

“Scully,” he murmurs as he trails behind her to her door.

She sighs and her shoulders drop. She can feel the tears pricking at her eyes and she desperately doesn’t want to fall apart in front of him.

“Mulder, not tonight, okay?”

“Will ya just slow down and talk to me? I’m-”

“You’re what?!” she gasps, turning on her heels with more agility than she thought she was capable of these days. “You’re what, Mulder? Happy for me?”

He gapes at her, clearly stunned.

“I cannot do this. Do you understand that?” The tears are coming and she is helpless to stop them. 

He gives her the hurt puppy face that she loves and hates in equal measure. She feels the familiar tightening in her chest and sucks in a long breath, trying to halt the panic attack before it can start. She turns away and begs God to let her get inside and away from him soon enough.

His fingers brush against the small of her back and it takes off like a cascade of dominoes.

She is gasping, sobbing, flailing as she barrels away from him and through the doors of her building. She stumbles down the hall and nearly falls.

“Jesus, Scully,” she hears him hiss behind her.

His hands are on her, around her, lifting her. Even as he’s holding her upright and moving her down the hall, she’s weakly trying to push him away.

“No,” she croaks. “Leave me alone.”

“Not a chance,” he replies.

They’ve made it into her apartment, he’s laying her on her side in bed and situating himself behind her. He presses his palm against her sternum, his thumb and forefinger span the distance of her collarbones. It’s the first time he’s made a conscious effort to touch her.

“I’m here,” he says into her hair. “Just breathe.”

“I can’t,” she gasps. She is shaking so hard that her teeth are chattering. She can feel it reverberating through the bones of her face and skull.

He’s holding her even tighter. She knows what he’s doing. She explained to him once that pressure stimulates the autonomic nervous system, essentially distracting the physical chain reaction of a panic attack.

“Breathe, Scully. Breathe with me.”

She draws in a rattling breath and pushes it back out again.

“Good,” he soothes. “Just like that.”

Eventually the gasping turns to deep breathing and soon she is drifting to sleep wrapped in his arms.  
_________

She’s under a mountain of blankets when she wakes. Her shoes are off, but she’s still in her clothes. Her bra is digging into her side and her pelvis feels like it’s being held together with spirit gum as the baby rolls deeply against her illium.

She groans softly as she attempts to roll to her back and push the blankets away.

“You okay, Scully?” a gentle voice asks.

She freezes.

“Scully?” he beckons again. The room is dark, but she can see him sitting in the chair in the corner.

She doesn’t know what to say. “You’re still here,” she blurts.

He’s rising from the chair and moving across the room. “Well, yeah. I wasn’t about to leave you like that.”

She wants to cut him down and let him know that’s exactly what he did months ago. She thinks better of it and swallows the urge down.

She sits up slowly, trying to get her bearings. “You don’t have to stay,” she says, looking down at her hands.

He’s approaching slowly, like you would a wounded animal. “I know I’m screwing this up,” he says as he sits on the edge of the bed.

“You’ve been through a lot,” she reasons, her voice barely above a whisper.

He looks over, trying to catch her eyes. “You have too. Skinner, the guys, they told me a little…” he trails off.

She nods, unable to make eye contact.

“The anxiety attacks…is that a pregnancy thing or?”

She breathes deep and steels herself. “They started after Duane Barry.”

He looks like she’s caught him with a right hook. See, you’re not the only one who keeps secrets.

“You never told me.”

And she’s not one bit sorry for it either.

“No, I didn’t.”

“Scully, why wouldn’t you tell me something like that?”

She feels her heart start to pound. The nerve of this man, honestly.

“Because it’s none of your business, Mulder.”

He seems to realize his hypocrisy as he rises from the edge of the bed.

“Try to get some rest, Scully,” he says as he walks out of the room.

“Yeah,” she says not so much to him, but to the sound of her front door slamming shut.  
_______

His phone chirps as he pulls away from her apartment.

“Mulder,” he grumbles as he answers.

“Jesus, it’s true.”

“I’m sorry, who is this?” he’s not actually sorry, of course.

“God, I apologize. It’s cousin Mike.”

“Mike? Damn man, it’ good to hear from you,” he says with the most unabashed chuckle he’s had this side of death.

“It’s good to hear from you! Fox, you were…Jesus, this is insane.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Wow, I wanna see you. This weekend maybe?”

“Yeah, definitely. We can go grab a beer.”

“Or a cigar since congratulations are in order!”

He isn’t sure what the proper congratulatory procedure is for coming back from the dead. But he’s pretty sure it’s not cigars. Oh well. “Okay, then. Cigars too.”

“I’ll reach out to Dana and apologize personally, but let her know that I’m genuinely sorry, would ya?”

“Sorry for what?”

“Geez, she didn’t tell you, did she? She really is a class act,” he says, sounding every bit the patronizing WASP he’s always been. “I approached her at the funeral and told her that I thought it was important that your mom’s house stay in the family. Fox, I never would have put her through the paternity test if I’d known.”

“Paternity test?”

“Look, I gotta run. I’ll call you Saturday. ‘kay, buddy?”

“Yeah…yeah, okay.” he answers absently.


	7. Deodate

He drives directly to the storage unit with a stupid grin plastered across his face. The slopes and curves of her flash in his mind and he swells with emotion. It’s his. Theirs. 

The boxes and bins are piled high, but he knows exactly what he’s looking for. The room smells like his mother’s house, in a good way, familiar.

The box he’s looking for is up against the wall, buried two deep. He frees it and flips the top open.

The doll, stitched together with thick cotton thread, had been in the family since the Mulders came over from the Netherlands.

He’d always thought it was pretty ugly, but looks weren’t what made it special. The threadbare doll had sat in the crib of every Mulder baby for five generations. Six now, he thinks proudly.

“I did that,” he murmurs, thinking of Scully’s round belly.   
_______

She wakes up feeling congested, her sinuses are hot and dense. She fights through waves of coughing and sneezing, which inevitably trigger contractions. Harmless, in and of themselves, but distracting and uncomfortable at the very least.

She decides that the day is a lost cause and abandons her plans to pre-wash the baby clothes and crib bedding, opting instead to order pizza and letting a hot shower loosen all the crud clogging her airways.

When she hears a knock at the door, she assumes that her lunch has arrived early. She’s surprised to find Mulder standing there looking as anxious as a prom date.  
It’s nearly noon and she feels a little embarrassed that she’s still in her pajamas, but he doesn’t say anything and instead is joking lamely.

He’s full of surprises and she doesn’t quite know how to react. She jokes a little. The gift is beautifully wrapped, no doubt by someone other than him. She settles herself on the couch and lets him deal with the pizza man.

She feels the familiar tightening of another Braxton Hicks. And then something completely unfamiliar. What started as a twinge turns into something more, a clamping, white hot feeling.

Blinding, searing, all consuming pain takes over.

She can scarcely catch her breath to tell him something is wrong. But he already knows, he’s with her, holding her, reassuring her. 

“Is it the baby?” he asks.

All she can do is nod. She knows she’s going into shock because she’s hardly registering anything now, pain, fear, they’re all hovering at the edge of her consciousness. She can feel her pulse in her teeth and his hand wrapped securely over hers. But that’s about it. She knows she’s going under and is powerless to stay afloat.   
________

She’s gone from pale to ashen as they wait on the ambulance. He’d shown up with the intention of mending fences and fears he may have lost his chance altogether as she is losing her tenuous grasp on consciousness in his arms.

“Stay with me,” he implores her.

“I’m dizzy,” she says lightly.

She seems like she’s looking right through him with glassy doll’s eyes. He can’t help but flashback to that day 3 years ago as she lay gasping on the floor of his hallway. 

Panic settles over him as her eyes slip shut.

The EMTs have a million questions, it seems, only a very few of which he knows the answer to.

How far along? No idea. Recent illness? Well not since he’s been alive again. He clings to her hand and feels how cold she is. I did this, he thinks.

“Can you give her a blanket?” he asks softly.  
_________

When she wakes, it’s because there’s an ultrasound tech working gel around her belly and staring grimly at the screen.

“Looks like an abruption,” her doctor says.

“How bad?” she asks, her own voice sounding tinny and far away.

Doctor Speake looks concerned. “Hey, Dana. Welcome back. I’d say about 10%, but it looks like it’s already clotted. Are you having any pain right now?”

“Um, no,” she replies. She’s actually feeling hardly anything at all.

“Okay, we’re going to need to keep an eye on things for awhile. I’m going to admit you.”

“Do we need to deliver?” she asks nervously. She’s only 35 weeks, the baby’s lungs aren’t mature yet.

“Right now, I don’t think so.”

Relief. She turns to look at Mulder, but he isn’t there.

“The man that was with me,” she says. “Where is he?”

“I’m not sure, waiting room maybe?” the nurse chimes in. “Do you want me to get him?”

She nods emphatically.

“Okay, I’ll go check.”

The nurse comes back alone and she tries to not to look completely crushed.

Dr. Speake explains that she’ll be given sedatives, and kept on oxygen and a fetal monitor for at least the next 48 hours. She nods, wishing Mulder was next to her, and knowing that it is expecting entirely too much of him.  
_____

The feel of his hand on her belly is surreal and almost too good to bear. She wants him to stop and to never stop. If he were to stay, really stay only to run off to chase lights in the sky again…God, her heart simply couldn’t bear it. Better to have him walk away now than to be lulled into a false sense of security with a little temporary bliss. 

She’s not thinking clearly enough to tell him any of this of course.

They talk a while and she drifts back to sleep. She can smell his aftershave and hear his steady breathing and it feels so deeply and completely safe.

“Scully?” he murmurs softly, sometime much later.

“Yeah?” she sighs.

“You wanna try to eat something? They brought dinner,” he says, brushing a thumb over her knuckles.

“I’m not really hungry,” she says, the sedative is actually making her feel touch nauseous.

“The kid probably is,” he quips.

She smiles and chuckles softly. “You eat it if you want.”

“Uh-uh, I’ve had enough hospital food for a lifetime. I could go get you something else, if you want,” he says, standing eagerly.

“I’m okay, Mulder. Really.”

He nods and sits back down, fidgeting about a little. “In the ambulance, they asked me what your due date was and I had no idea.”

She’s confused for a moment.

“I know your blood type, I know your allergies. I know that opiate painkillers make you nauseous and that your veins are tiny and it always takes an experienced nurse to get a line in. I know you like two creams in your coffee and chocolate donuts, but only when we’re on the road,” he pauses with a little smile. “I know you sneeze when you first step into the sun. I know a million little things, but I couldn’t answer even half of the questions in the ambulance.”

She understands now. Mulder isn’t Mulder unless he’s beating himself up.

“Scully, when are we having this baby?”

“Mid May,” she says simply.

He nods and a small smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. “Mid May,” he echoes.   
_______

He cleans up the remnants of the pizza and sets about doing the dishes. She’s not sure how to feel about him puttering around her kitchen.

“Do you have a name picked yet?” he asks casually from the sink.

“Um, no. Not really. Nothing feels right.”

She realizes that maybe she’s failed to factor in his feelings on this whole matter.

“Did you have anything in mind?” she asks tentatively.

He finishes setting the dishes in the drying rack and towels off his hands. He saunters back to the couch and sits down next to her. “I uh…I guess I hadn’t really thought about it.”

She shrugs in the most noncommittal way possible. “Well, if you think of something…you know…an outside perspective couldn’t hurt.”

“Well, speaking from experience, I’d say avoid animal names.” His smile is broad and teasing.

“Duly noted,” she replies with a breathy laugh. This feels so good that she’s struggling to accept that it’s real.

These are moments she dreamed about before he was found and mourned after they’d buried him. She briefly wonders if it is an hallucination.

“You okay?” he asks

“I’m fine,” she deflects. It’s easier than trying to explain that she feels like she’s made of candy glass, like the smallest vibration could shatter her.

His hand rests gently against hers.

“Scully,” he says. “I think we both know that’s not true.”

“Maybe,” she concedes. “But you’re less fine right now.”


	8. Agnosco

“I’ve been so stupid, so naive,” she sighed as she hung on to the edge of the kitchen sink. The cool porcelain felt like it might crumble under her hands. 

“What are we talking about here, Scully?”

“You’d like me to tell my child that you went down swinging…”

“Look that was just…I didn’t…I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“It’s fine. I’m fine. I just…I can’t believe how long it took me to figure it out.”

He rises from the kitchen table and draws up close to her back. Every muscle in her body looks like it’s gone rigid. 

“Figure out what?”

“Why you said yes to helping me get pregnant…why you said all those things before.”

“Scully-”

“It’s easy to make a lifelong commitment when you think you’re going to be dead in six months.”

He feels sick to his stomach, a dense, roiling feeling in the pit of his gut.

“Scully, no. That wasn’t it at all, that was never what it was.”

“And this, now…the doll and staying here with me…it’s not real, none of it is real.”

Her breath comes in shallow pants. He grips her shoulders and feels her flinch, but he doesn’t let go. He dips low, so that his lips brush her ear. 

“It’s real. It’s all real.”

She sucks in a deep, shuddering breath and shakes her head.

“No. This is you feeling guilty.” Her voice is thick with tears. 

“Scully, please…”

“Why did you agree to helping me, Mulder?”

He is quiet a moment, his fingers tensing along her collarbone, his thumbs kneading the wings of her scapulae. 

“I did it because your happiness was the most important thing to me.”

“And now?”

“Nothing’s changed.”

She trembles and sighs. “You did it out of pity then.”

“That’s not what I said, Scully.”

“I think it is,” she murmurs, seeming to find her resolve. “And I think you should go.”

“Scully, c’mon…”

“I appreciate what you’re trying to do, I really do.”

“But?”

“But I can’t just let you play pretend to spare my feelings.” 

She turns, shucking his hands off of her shoulders. Her chin dimples and quivers as her heavy eyes roam his face. 

“I’m giving you the easy out, here,” she sighs, talking at his chest. 

He reaches out and cups her face. His hands are warm and it makes her skin buzz to feel him like this. 

“I don’t want an easy out. I don’t want out at all.”

“God, I was…I was just so happy to have you back, so happy to have a second chance with you and you…just …aren’t.”

“Wait-” his hands drop.

“I’m not what makes you happy. The chase is what makes you happy.”

Her eyes have locked onto his and he knows he’s caught. Little in this world brings him as much joy as a hot lead. He’d all but pushed her out of the way to get to the next big thing, to get out to that fucking oil rig. Barely recovered from the abruption, she’d gone slicing and dicing for him. Always for him.

“Even when I could follow you anywhere, I couldn’t be enough for you. And now…I can’t follow you anymore.”

“Not enough…Scully, what are you…”

“I don’t want this to be an ultimatum. That’s not what this is. I just…” She’s babbling now, not even looking at him. 

“Scully will you slow down and listen?” 

“I have to put this baby first and I can’t-”

“Scully.”

“-keep hoping that you’ll choose us over-”

“Scully.”

“-this quest. It’ll eat us all alive. I can’t-”

“Dana!” he thunders.

She looks up, wide eyed. Using her Christian name is something akin to a slap across the face judging by the look she’s giving him. He holds her shoulders, his stomach so close to her belly that he can feel the heat radiating from it.

“I have gone to the ends of the earth for you…literally.”

“Out of guilt, Mulder. Self flagellation. I thought it was…I thought that you…” Her voice catches and a soft sob escapes. “You never said it back. Never once did you say it back. I…I almost lost everything looking for you and you’ve never even said it back.”

“I’m sorry, I should have. I should have told you every chance I got.”

“You said it yourself, we just work together…now we don’t even do that.” She pushes past him and shuffles to the living room. 

“Scully, just stop and listen, would ya?” he pleads as she is walking to the door. 

“Mulder, I have been listening. You don’t want this…us. You’ve said it a dozen different ways, I just now heard it was all.”

“That’s not what I was saying. I promise you. But Jesus, Scully…if I profess my undying love right now, you’d never believe it.”

Her hand is on the doorknob and she is ready to usher him out, more than ready. 

“So let me show you, Scully. We’ll start small,” he says as he approaches. He pauses in front of her and gently reaches out to touch her belly.

“Mulder, this baby will be here soon. Very soon. I don’t have time for incrementalism.”

“When’s your next doctor’s appointment?” he asks quietly, his fingers dancing gently along the upper swell of her belly.

Her eyes narrow suspiciously. “Tomorrow morning, before work.”

“I’ll come get you. We can get breakfast first.”

He leans down and presses his lips against her cheekbone, warm and soft. She gasps softly and her heart flutters. 

He lets himself out before she can argue with him.  
_________

He sits with his hands clasped tightly. The exam room is small and female anatomy diagrams hang on the walls. Someone has taped a slip of paper over the depiction of the vulva. He finds that a little laughable and wonders whose delicate sensibilities found it so objectionable.

“You’re still working?” Dr. Speake asks, her tone somewhere between shock and dismay. 

Her bare feet dangle, heels bumping up against the metal exam table. A scratchy sheet is draped over her lap. She twists a bit of the threadbare exam gown between her thumb and forefinger. 

“Not in the field, just autopsies and desk work,” she replies softly.

“Dana, an autopsy keeps you on your feet for hours on end. You need to take it easy. Your blood pressure has been steadily ticking up and you’ve dropped 2 pounds in the last week.”

Mulder looks at her and her chin drops to her chest. 

“You need stop working,” Dr. Speake says firmly. 

“Well, I can notify HR and finish out the week,” she offers.

“No, Dana. You need to go home and relax. Today.” She looks pointedly at Mulder. He nods solemnly.

Message received. 

Scully purses her lips a bites the inside of her cheek. 

“Dana, the fact that you’ve made it this far is a miracle. This is serious.”

“Okay then. Today,” she says simply.

“Good then, let’s take a listen, huh?” 

Scully nods. Mulder’s eyes widen as he watches her lie back on the table. His chair against the wall suddenly feels a little too intimate.   
I haven’t earned this, he thinks.

The doctor pushes the gown up and palpates her belly with pads of her fingers. She deposits a glob of gel and presses the doppler probe against the skin near her gunshot scar. 

An almost mechanical, repetitive sound bounces off of the walls. 

wah-ka-wah-ka-wah-ka-wah-ka-wah-ka-wah-ka

She feels a little flood of relief. Regardless of how much she feels the baby move, there’s always a brief moment of panic until she can hear the heartbeat. 

“150 beats per minute! Sounds great,” she remarks. “Any contractions?” she asks as she moves to Scully’s feet.

Scully, clearly having done this before, raises her knees and plants her feet on the table. The tissue paper under her crinkles a little. She clears her throat and focuses her gaze on a water stain on the ceiling tile. Mulder follows suit and looks up.

“Dana? Contractions?” the doctor repeats.

“Ah, some.” There’s a little wince in her voice.

Mulder isn’t looking at the ceiling anymore. He’s looking at his partner who was in a hospital bed not three weeks ago. Some?

“Cramping? Bleeding?”

“No, no, nothing like that.”

“Baby’s head is low, low, low,” her voice dropping a little with each low.

“Yeah, I noticed,” Scully chuffs.

“You’re about 80% effaced, I’d say dilated to 2, nearly 3.”

“Wow,” she half breathes.

Mulder is ping ponging between the two of them trying to decipher the whole exchange.

“Better get that hospital bag packed!” the doctor says, looking again at Mulder. 

His turn now, “Wow.”

“Dana, I’m serious about work. And if you start contracting, just go in, don’t try to tough it out at home,” she says as she sheds her gloves and quickly scribbles a note on the chart.

“You’re concerned about another abruption?” Scully asks as she sits back up. 

“I am. But with proper care and monitoring I think you can avoid a c-section. You’ve got to take it easy.”

She looks at Mulder as if he might be able to enforce this edict. He thinks maybe this doctor doesn’t know Scully at all. 

“I’ll see you in a week. Call me if you need anything,” she says as she breezes to the door. “And pack that bag!” she calls on her way out. 

She is looking at him with eyes like saucers. 

“You okay?” he asks.

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t seem fine.”

“I just wanna get outta here,” she says as she eases off of the exam table.

He stands and hands her the stack of her neatly folded clothes.  
__________

“So, home then?” he asks as he noses the car away from the curb. 

“No. Work,” she says simply. 

“Scully-”

She cuts him off, the irritation present in her voice. “I need to go talk to HR. I need to get my things.”

“You can talk to HR on the phone and your things will be there when you go back.”

There is silence. She’s picking at the cuticle on her thumb and nearly staring through the floorboard. He realizes that she isn’t going to say anything and drives in silence.   
He glances over when they reach a stop light. She’s simultaneously close enough to touch and light years away. There will be no further discussion, he knows. 

“Just drop me off at the Hoover Building. I’ll catch a cab home,” she murmurs. 

“I’ll take you. I’ll wait,” he says firmly. 

She looks out the window and rests her palm atop her belly. She shifts and lets out a slow breath. 

“Fine.”

When they arrive, she gets out without a word and shuffles across the parking garage away from him. A half hour later, he is leaning on the hood of the car and working his way through a bag of sunflower seeds. He hears the elevator ding and the scuffing of her heels on the concrete. They used to click, a staccato rhythm through the halls. So much is unfamiliar now.

She’s looking at nothing in particular as she meanders back to him, a box balanced on her hip. He holds out his hands and she passes it to him without a glance, let alone a word. 

He peers into the box as he sets it in the back seat. A Scully family picture, a couple science journals, assorted bric-a-brac, 8 years in that office and she barely had enough there to fill one box. He could have filled a U Haul with all his detritus. 

They set out for her apartment when her phone chirps. “Hullo?” she sighs.

He’s always loved that her “hello” was just little muddled. 

“Oh…no it’s okay, mom. I can go on my own…I’ll be fine, really….okay, feel better…yeah, call me tomorrow.”  
She slips her phone back in her pocket and looks out the window again.

“Go where on your own?” he asks.

“Huh?”

“Where was your mom gonna go with you?” he asks as he navigates through a throng of slower than average cars. 

“Oh, um, it’s nothing, I’ll just cancel it.”

“Cancel what?”

She looks over, her eyebrow arched imperiously. 

“My mom was going to be my labor coach for a birthing class today but she’s sick so…”

“I’ll go with you,” he says, like it is the most natural conclusion. 

She looks momentarily stunned. 

“You want to go with me to a birthing class?” she asks, deeply incredulous. 

“You can’t go without a coach.”

“You want to be my coach?”

“Yeah, sure. Why not?” he asks as he glances her way. 

She clearly has no idea what to say. Her mouth bobs momentarily. 

“Well, first of all, there’s going to be a video of a birth. Second, the person who attends with me would be expected to be my labor coach,” she pauses and lets that sink in. “When I’m in labor, Mulder, you’d be signing up to be the one who stands there and watches.” 

“I hope I’d be doing more than watching, Scully,” he replies. “You’re gonna need your back rubbed and someone to bring you ice chips and hold your hand and…”he pauses when he sees the way she’s looking at him, like she can’t believe what he’s saying, “…and well someone has to cut the cord, right?” 

“You’re saying you want that someone to be you?”

They ease to a stop in front of her building and he puts the car in park. He turns so that he is facing her more directly. Her brow is crinkled and she looks like she might be on the verge of tears. 

“That’s what I’m saying, Scully. I’m all in.” 

She watches him like she’s waiting for a shoe to drop. He proffers a toothy grin and grabs her hand. A little smile tugs at the corner of her mouth.

“Okay then.”


	9. Stillness

The feeling of her back pressed against his chest, her hand on his knee, her even breathing offers a pleasant counterweight to what’s taking place on the screen in dimmed room. 

He winces a little, watching a baby’s head crown followed by the agonizing scream of its mother. Scully doesn’t even flinch. Looking briefly around the room he quickly assesses that it’s full of lightweights in the area of pain endurance. Scully’s been through cancer. Scully’s been through abduction and the ICU. Scully’s been shot. Scully lost and then buried her best friend after finding out she was pregnant. Scully is so, so strong. 

He feels like his hand is drawn to her as wraps an arm around her and palms her belly. He feels the alien-like movement under her shirt and loses his breath for a moment. 

The video ends and the lights come on. He pulls his hand away, he’s not sure why. 

The instructor, a middle aged woman in blue scrubs smiles and clasps her hands. “Okay! Let’s take a few minutes to discuss the things that might be making you feel anxious.”

Scully shifts, her nerves firing like machine gun. 

Anxiety? Oh only that aliens will kill me and take my baby. The usual.

The other prospective parents talk about far more mundane things, fear of the pain, anxiety about embarrassment, worries that daddy won’t be able to hack it and will end up passed out on the floor. 

Scully has remained conspicuously silent. 

“Dana? What about you? Any fears or anxieties you’d like to discuss?”

Mulder can feel her go completely taught in his arms. 

“Um…I’m a doctor so I’m probably a little too aware of everything that can go wrong. I’m not a very good patient either.”

“What about you, Fox? Do you have concerns?”

Fox. They aren’t even Mulder and Scully here. They’re Fox and Dana with little “hello, my name is ____” stickers on their shirts. He didn’t expect to have to answer any questions, so he fumbles momentarily. 

“It’s…it’s true that she’s not a very good patient and not always ready to tell me when things are serious…there’ve been times when she’s been sick, very sick or in a lot of pain and then not been forthcoming about it.”

She’s holding her breath, he can tell. But he goes on, “I just worry that she’ll need me and I won’t even know.”

“That’s a great point,” the instructor says as she turns her attention back to the rest of the room. “Communication is so important!”

She is stock still and silent for the rest of the class, which runs another hour. His ass has gone numb and he wonders how she could possibly be comfortable at this point. She shifts as the other couples start to extricate themselves. 

“Ready?” he asks quietly.

“Hang on,” she whispers.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“Just hang on, I’m having a contraction,” she says between clenched teeth. 

Momentary panic washes over him but he quickly remembers that they’re in the best place they could possibly be in this situation. 

“Are you feeling it in your back?” he asks quietly. 

She nods a little. He snakes his hand between them and begins working broad circles on her lumbar zone for several quiet seconds. She lets out a long shaky breath. 

“It’s okay,” she huffs. “I’m okay, it’s going away.”

“Should we go upstairs?” he asks. Upstairs being labor and delivery. 

“No, I’m okay. I wanna go home.”

“Whatever you say.”

He gets up and holds out his hands for her. The momentum built in pulling her up has her nearly tumbling into his embrace. He wraps his arms around her and pulls her into his chest. 

“I’ve got you,” he murmurs. She seems to relax into his arms, pressing her cheek into his chest. “It’s all going to be okay.”

She nods and pulls away.   
________

He dials her number without even looking at the phone. He could dial it with his toes if he had to. The fact that he knows that she’s been on her feet for hours now has him on edge. 

“Scully,” she answers, the tension clear in her voice.

“I got him, Scully. Agents Doggett and Harrison are on their way to the hospital right now,” he says as he watches the trailing lights of the ambulance pull away from the wooded estate. 

He can almost hear her decompress. “Oh thank God. Is he okay?”

“He will be. I’m headed your way,” he says.

“It’s okay, Mulder, I’ll take a cab.”

“It’s after midnight. Do you really think I’m going to let you stand on a curb in downtown DC when I could just come get you?”

He can hear a long sigh over the line and can picture her in her scrubs and white tennis shoes pressing her palms into her lower back. 

“Okay,” she says. 

“Any contractions?” he asks as he turns the key and the car comes to life.

She’s quiet initially. “A couple.”

“Go put your feet up. I’ll call you when I’m close.”

When he arrives, she is standing on the sidewalk, still in her scrubs with a large bag slung over her shoulder. 

“Hey pretty lady,” he calls. “Going my way?”

She smiles past the tiredness that is clearly taken hold.

“I can’t imagine who you’re talking to, Mulder,” her voice betraying the discomfort she feels as she eases into the seat. 

“How’s the wee one? Any more contractions?” he asks, pulling away from the Hoover for the 3rd time in two days. 

“We’re okay,” she says softly.

The streetlamps cast shadows over her face and he can see how drained she is. 

“Let’s get you two home then,” he says.

“Hm,” she sighs, as if shaken out a brief reverie. “No, I need to go check on John.”

“Scully, c’mon, it’s almost 1 am. You’re dead on your feet. I can see it.”

“I’ve got the cultures from the bacteria and the analysis of the venom, both of which they need to treat him,” she says firmly. 

He can tell when he’s on the losing side of an argument. Yes, she’s clearly exhausted, but nothing stops her when she’s made up her mind. 

“Okay, so we go to the hospital. You talk to the doctor and then straight home after. No keeping vigil at the guy’s bedside or anything.”

“You’re the only one I do that for,” she says with a little smile. 

He waits in the hallway while she talks with the doctor. When she reemerges nearly an hour later, a hand pressed against her lower back, her mouth in a tight line, he fears bringing her here was a mistake. 

“Let’s go,” she murmurs softly. 

She is dozing in the car, her hand resting atop her belly. By the time they pull in front of her building she is out cold, nearly snoring. 

“Scully, wake up,” he says as he combs his fingers through her hair. 

“Hmmm,” she sighs. “Time izzit?”

“Almost 3 am…I don’t think this was what Dr. Speake had in mind when she said to take it easy.”

She blinks the sleep out of her eyes and exhales. 

“I suppose you’re right.”

“Come on then, off to bed with you,” he says as he shuts off the car.

“I gotta eat something, my blood sugar is crashing,” she sighs as she unbuckles.

Once inside, she heads straight to the kitchen.

“Uh-uh,” he says as he steps between her and the fridge.

“Mulder, what are you doing?”

“You go get ready for bed. I’ll bring you something to eat.”

She knits her brow and her jaw bobs for a second.

“Craving anything in particular?” he asks as he steps behind her and places his hands on her shoulders.

“Um…no.”

He is guiding her toward the bedroom and drops a kiss on the top of her head. 

“Go get comfy, I’ll fix you something.”

She passes him a wary glance over her shoulder,but acquiesces. 

When he heads back to the bedroom with a sandwich and apple slices, he finds her flat on her back lying diagonally across the bed. She didn’t even manage to get out of her tennis shoes, let alone change into her signature silk jammies. 

His heart pounds for a second as he realizes just how much he loves her.

“Scully, you aren’t supposed to be on your back,” he says as he places the plate on the night stand.

“How’d ya know that?” she slurs sleepily.

He sits down and pulls her feet into his lap. He tugs on the laces of her bright white tennis shoes. 

“I told ya,” he says as he unties them. “Oprah.”

She lets out a breathy little chuckle. He works her shoes off gently and peels her socks away to reveal just how swollen her feet and ankles are. 

“Jesus, this looks painful, Scully.”

She pushes up on her elbows and smirks at him. 

“A little, I guess. Comparatively speaking, they’re not so bad.”

“Yeah? What’s worse by comparison?” he asks as he begins to rub her feet.

She tilts her head to one side and her eyes dart downward. A sadness drops across her face like a veil.

“Scully? Did I say something wrong?”

“Nothing, no, it’s my fault,” she says softly.

“What is?”

“Comparatively speaking…what’s worse has been…” she stops, tears welling in her eyes.

“Scully?”

“The fear and,” her breath hitches, “the loneliness and the grief…god, the grief,” she sobs as she covers her face.

“Scully, Scully, Scully,” he attempts to soothe. “God, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

He crawls up the bed and pulls her into his arms. 

“Nooooo, don’t. I’m sorry, it’s hormones and I’m exhausted. I’m not trying to guilt you…”

“Shhhhhh, Scully,” he whispers as he strokes her hair and presses kisses on her forehead. 

She clutches his shirt in her fist and simply breaks down. He runs his palm up and down her back, scritch-scratching on the faded scrub material.  
She is pressed close to him, as close as the swell of her belly will allow. The baby shifts and he feels the distinct movements against his own abdomen.

“I’m sorry,” he tells her. “I didn’t know and I didn’t try to know and I’m sorry.”

“I’m a mess. I hate this,” she says with a shuddering breath. 

“Hate what?”

“Being so emotional, being out of control,” she says with a sniffle. 

“I know,” he says, his lips still pressed against the smooth skin of her forehead. “You gotta slow down and get some rest, okay?”

The only person he has loved, truly loved, is her. He realizes, perhaps too late, that she’s done the tremendous and unexpected favor of loving him back. Even though he’s just a little crazy, even though he’s paranoid, even though he’s done simply the worst job showing his depth of affection for her, she still loves him. 

He’s got his whole world in his arms right now. His future, his past, everything he could hope to know or understand, it’s right here. 

He feels like he could cry himself, trying to fight the sting in his sinuses and tightness in his throat. 

As usual, she can sense the shift. “Not you too, Mulder,” she says as her hand finds its way to the nape of his neck and her fingers weave into his hair.

“I’m big ole sap when it comes to you, Scully.”

She chuckles a little at that. He pulls back to meet her eyes. 

“You gonna be okay?” he asks. Okay in the sense that she’s done falling apart for the moment, at least.

She nods a little.

“I’ll work on your feet, you work on that sandwich.”

She cracks a sad little smile. Her eyes are red and puffy with the glassy sheen of exhaustion and fresh tears.  
The act of pressing his thumbs into her arches elicits a low groan as her head drops back on her shoulders. The sight and sound of it feel familiar and foreign all at once. 

“Too much?” he asks tentatively.

“Oh god don’t you dare stop,” she very nearly moans.

He can’t help but laugh a little. 

“Eat your sandwich,” he says. 

She picks up her lolling head and looks suspiciously at the plate on her nightstand. 

“Mulder?”

“Yeah?”

“What the hell is this?”

“That is a honey peanut butter banana sandwich,” he says matter of factly as he wraps both hands around a foot and presses the flesh toward her ankle.

She chuckles a little and leans over to pick up the plate as he continues his ministrations on her foot.

“Where’d you come up with this?” she asks before she takes a bite.

“It’s got everything you need, protein, sugar, potassium for those leg cramps.”

“Oprah, huh?”

“What to Expect When You’re Expecting.”

“No way,” she says past a mouthful of peanut butter.

“I read it cover to cover,” he tells her. “Don’t look so surprised!”

“I am surprised.”

“Finish your sandwich,” he tells her. She smiles a little.

She changes and settles into bed while he cleans up in the kitchen. When he returns to the bedroom, she is in a nest of pillows and groaning softly as struggles to get comfortable.

“You need anything?” he asks as he palms her shoulder.

“Hm, just sleep,” she says dreamily.

“Okay, get some rest,” he says as he turns off the lamp and starts moving for the door.

“You’re leaving?” she asks.

He pauses. “I can stay.”

“Yeah,” she says, barely awake. “Stay.”


	10. Prosus

The room slowly clears. She watches, wild-eyed, as the strangers trickle out. The baby screams and squirms against her chest, the umbilical cord pulses against her distended belly, still tethering them together.

“What’s that sound?” Monica asks, looking up.

She thought maybe it was her heart, thumping like a bass drum, but it isn’t. It’s the steady, chopping blade of a helicopter.

“It’s Mulder,” she says with relief.

Monica covers them both with a heavy blanket and darts outside. She glances down and gets a good look at him for the first time. She suddenly finds it hard to breathe.

“Hi,” she gasps, tears trickling down her cheeks. “I’m your mom.”

The baby quiets and blinks with puffy, squinty eyes. She weeps as she cradles him close and lets the fear drift away like a handful of balloons. Her son is perfect and his father is coming for them.  
________

If looks could kill, he’d be eviscerated by the face Maggie Scully is making at him right now.

“Fox, what was she even doing out there?”

The hospital lighting shows every line of worry etched on her face. He knows he’s responsible for his fair share of them.

“She was in danger. It was the only way,” he tries to explain.

“Danger?” she nearly shouts. “She nearly bled to death!”

“I know, believe me, I know.”

She’d started circling the drain in his arms just as the chopper lifted them away from the dusty ramshackle town. Monica whisked the baby from her and kept him warm until they reached the hospital.

“Stay with him,” Scully pleaded with him as they lifted her away from his grasp.

Hours later, he is outside the NICU and Scully is the next floor up being treated for massive hemorrhaging and a retained placenta.

“The doctor said she’s responding well,” he explains. “We’ll probably be able to go home in a couple days.”

“You,” Maggie responds with her finger at his sternum, “will not be taking them home. You’ve done quite enough.”

He’s stunned and she conveys no pity. The ability to paralyze with a look is apparently a Scully family trait. She is smoldering as she walks away to be with her daughter. Because he values his life, he does not follow. Instead, he heads back to sit with the baby.

“Hey Dad!” a nurse greets cheerfully.

He quickly glances around to make sure she’s not talking to someone else.

“Uh, hi,” he replies tentatively.

“Little guy is having some trouble keeping his temperature up. Have you ever heard of skin to skin?” she asks.

He looks down at the baby who is bathed in artificial light along with a few monitors and wires. He’s got a little mask on to protect his eyes and a hat, but he isn’t really sure what that’s for. Apparently babies come with them.

The nurse explains how his body heat will be very beneficial in helping the baby maintain his temperature. Before he knows it, he’s sitting in a chair shirtless and the infant is being laid against his chest.

The nurse situates several warm blankets over the two of them and smiles.

“Does he have a name yet?” she asks.

“Not yet,” he replies as he palms the baby’s velvety head.

“Okay, let me know if he gets fussy.”

“We’ll be alright,” he says softly.

The baby stirs and blinks up at him, looking utterly confused. Maybe it’s just him projecting his own feelings on the situation.

“You and me, both, little man,” he murmurs.  
________

She has never felt so weak and tired in her life. She is exhausted to the point of numbness.

“Hmmm, where’s Muller?” she mumbles, even her lips feel numb.

“He’s downstairs with the baby, dear,” Maggie says as she rubs her hand.

She wants to open her eyes, but she just can’t. She swallows and feels a rolling wave of nausea.

“S’the baby okay?” the words are clear in her head, but slushy in her mouth.

“He’s perfect,” her mother tells her, a smile in her voice.

“I wanna see ‘em.”

“Sweetie, you’ve got rest right now,” she soothes.

She feels the tender touch of her mother’s hands smoothing her hair, cupping her cheek and succumbs to unconsciousness.  
Maggie watches her toss fitfully and wishes she could simply draw her into her arms and rock her as she did when she was a little girl.

When she’d stopped by Dana’s apartment that morning and found it empty, she was immediately terrified. Not being able to reach her wayward partner was just icing on the cake. When she got the call that she was in Georgia of all places, she was initially relieved, but the flight in gave her plenty of time to get good and mad. Her daughter, her only daughter, and grandson nearly lost their lives and it’s not something she can forgive so easily. The Captain used to accuse her of having Irish Alzheimer’s: forgetting everything but a grudge. She’s willing to concede, as she clutches her child’s hand, that he was likely right.  
________

He waits until late the next day to venture up to her room rather than tempting the wrath of Maggie Scully. She is blessedly absent.

He’d managed to score a set of scrubs since his son baptized his clothes during a diaper change that morning. The nurses had tittered behind cupped hands and commented that it must be his first time changing a boy. He felt lucky that he didn’t put the thing on backwards.

Scully is bundled in the hospital bed, as pale as the threadbare sheets she lays on. He moves in quietly and takes a seat next to her bed.

“Heard you really endeared yourself to mom,” she sighs as her eyes draw open like heavy curtains.

He chuckles and scoops up her hand.

“Yeah, I hear she’s starting a fan club.”

“Well, I’m the president then.”

She squeezes his hand and he could just sob with the joy and relief of it all.

“They’re gonna bring the baby up soon if you’re up for it,” he tells her.

She seems to be suddenly lit from within.

“Yeah,” she says with a teary smile. “It seems weird, but it’s only been a day and I miss him so much.”

“It’s not weird. I just left him five minutes ago and I miss him.”

And it’s true, he does. The feel of his peachy skin and downy head are imprinted on his heart now, like the loops and whorls of a fingerprint. With all the same permanence and definition of identity. He is my son, I am his father.

There is a soft knock on the door and a smiling nurse comes in pushing a bassinet. He immediately rises and helps her get situated, raising the bed and tucking a pillow behind her back. The nurse gently transfers the tightly wrapped boy to his mother’s waiting arms.

“Oh God,” she says, her voice trembling with tears. “He’s so beautiful.”

He edges onto the bed next to her and wraps an arm over the two of them. He watches her stroke a fingertip down the bridge of the baby’s nose.

“I was thinking I should head back to DC in the morning, get the baby’s room finished before you two come home.”

“Are you avoiding my mother?”

“Maybe a little,” he concedes.

“I think it’s a good idea, nothing is ready yet,” she says, talking to him but staring at the baby.

When his flight departs the next morning, he feels like he is travelling with his heart outside of his body. It’s still thumping away, though, in a hospital room in Georgia.  
_____

Maggie fusses over the two of them as Scully struggles to get comfortable in the rigid airplane seat. The baby has slept through boarding and takeoff, but is now voicing his discomfort or hunger, she’s not sure which. He is grunting and squeaking with his fists balled up tightly. She rocks and shushes, but to no avail.

“He’s probably hungry,” Maggie says softly.

She feels a momentary wave of panic. Despite the nurse’s claims that she was a natural and that the baby’s latch was perfect, she’s feeling less than confident.  
After a few fumbling attempts, the baby latches successfully and quiets immediately as his little jaw clucks rhythmically. Maggie smiles in adoration.

“You know, Dana, you’re going to have to settle on a name soon.”

“I’ve got something in mind,” she sighs as she smiles down at her son.


End file.
